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Nearly three years ago, a man called me and told me he was embezzling money. He was not the target of an investigation. The FBI wasn't looking at him. No one was.
I told him: you've got to stop the bleeding. Do not make matters worse.
I referred him to five lawyers. He didn't call one.
He had convinced himself, like so many people, including me, that he could fix it. Another wire, another transfer, just another quarter, and he was going to fix it and no one would ever know. I think that's how people get into deeper trouble.
Very few people wake up and say, today's the day I'm going to end up on the wrong side of federal prison boundaries. No. We convince ourselves we are fixing it.
I know because we spoke earlier. He didn't fix it.
The losses doubled. More victims. More pain. More heartache. The indictment. The guilty plea. The conviction. The sentencing. More than six years in federal prison.
Now he's enduring the regret. Wow, I wish I took your advice three years ago.
What "stop the bleeding" actually means
Two things, in this order.
Stop moving money. Each additional wire, each additional transfer, adds to the loss the government will eventually calculate, and it adds to the number of people that loss touches.
Call a lawyer before you call anyone else. Not a friend. Not a business partner. What you tell a lawyer is protected. What you tell a friend or a business partner is not. That's why I gave him five names.
He had all five. He didn't dial one.
Why "I'll fix it" doesn't work
One more transfer. One more quarter. That was his plan.
Federal fraud sentences scale with two things more than almost anything else: how much money is gone, and how many people it's gone from. Every month spent "fixing it" with someone else's money adds to both. In the three years since that phone call, this man's losses doubled and pulled in more victims before the indictment ever came. That stretch, the one where he kept telling himself he was fixing it, is most of what turned into a sentence of more than six years.
If this is you right now
Maybe no one is investigating you either. That doesn't mean this resolves itself.
Stop the transfers today, not after this quarter closes.
Call a lawyer today. If you don't have one yet, ask for more than one name and call more than one of them.
Write down what happened, in order, while you still remember it accurately: dates, amounts, who was involved. That record is for your lawyer.
He's the one telling me now that he wishes he'd made that call three years ago. If you're doing something illegal right now and you're one more transfer, one more quarter, one more lie away from telling yourself you'll fix it, I beg you to stop.
It just doesn't work.
Written by
Justin Paperny
Founder White Collar Advice
